


A Stuffed Box

by feeding_geese



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:38:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeding_geese/pseuds/feeding_geese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Hunger Games/Doctor Who crossover<br/>(this prompt features Haymitch as the Doctor:) )</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stuffed Box

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Book_Junkie007](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Book_Junkie007/gifts).



> It is a lot harder to write a Doctor Who fic than I ever imagined! I hope you like your gift, brief as it is. All my deep respect to Doctor Who fic writers!  
> Thanks as always to my lovely beta!

“The lovebirds have found your swimming pool,” she sighed as she leaned her hip against the console.  She had a maddening habit of tossing herself wherever she pleased, especially in the main hub where he found lately that he prefered to be alone with his machine.  He cocked an eyebrow at her, not completely sure he wanted to know anything more.  “She’s teaching him how to swim. It's good for a laugh. So far he's mastered sinking." He allowed himself a smirk at that. Johanna always thought the kids' awkward attempts at affection laughable, but they had wormed quite a snug little burrow in his hearts.

 

They all had, actually.

 

This was not the first time in his travels that his box had been full, but he was hard put to recall a time when it had been so very full.  The TARDIS was potentially infinite, but it had never held so many souls before.  Johanna had started it all.  Started and changed it all at once.  He had been travelling alone, convinced as he sometimes was that he was better without companionship.  That all he could offer another being was danger and death.  The TARDIS knew better, naturally.  It took him to the colonies.  Not the ones on the moon, the older ones,  the British ones that would become the Americas.  He found himself parked in the woods outside a small logging village, wondering what had brought him to that particular place, when he heard a piercing scream.  Then the pain and fire and light.

 

The Doctor awoke tied to a chair in a small shack, his dark-haired captor staring at him in shock.

 

“You’re the one, aren’t you?” she breathed, gripping an axe tightly.

 

“I’ve learned that it’s wise to ask for particulars before answering that.”  He stopped at the strange voice coming from his mouth.  It was his but then again it wasn’t.  It was deep and gruff and lacked the whimsy he had grown accustomed to.  

 

“You’re the one killing all the children,” she replied.  “The one making them all sick.  The witch.”

 

“Aahhh,” The Doctor breathed.  “No.  I am not.”  The look in her eyes suggested otherwise.

 

“But I saw you materialize from thin air from that box--”

 

“TARDIS,” he sighed, slightly surprised at his lack of patience.

 

“But I struck you with my axe!  And you glowed and were set ablaze and awoke with a new face!” Ah, so that was it.  The last times he had seen it coming, known that his end in a body was imminent; he had forgotten how sudden regeneration could be.  It was falling off the Pharos Project telescope all over again.

In the end, the Doctor couldn’t quite persuade the girl known as Johanna that he wasn’t a witch of some sort, but he did manage to convince her that he wasn’t guilty of bewitching any children.  This didn’t exactly make her smile, however.

 

“I’m sorry, but it was my hope that if I caught the real witch, the villagers would believe that I was not the one causing the afflictions.”

 

“You?” the Doctor asked.  “Why would anyone think you were a witch?  You don’t even look the proper part.”  In his experience, females passing themselves off as what humans believed to be witches either went the crone or vixen route, and this slim twig of a girl was neither.

 

“A self same illness struck my family last harvest,” she shrugged.  “I was the only one who survived.”

When Johanna finally untied him and let him investigate, the solution was painfully simple.  Time tourists from Mara had been characteristically sloppy in their travels, leaving their mark all over the time stream, interacting where they were forbidden, and spreading their foreign diseases in a time unable to cope with the pathogens.  It was an easy fix, a serum he kept that was a cure-all for a myriad of simplistic diseases--nearly anything except that pesky Earth cold.  But even with their children in a healthy state, the villagers remained wary of Johanna.  And a little pitchforky.

That was how the Doctor found his new companion.

**************************************************************

The lovebirds in his swimming pool came along just as the Doctor had begun to feel comfortable in his new skin.  He was older in appearance now, with a grizzled beard and a slight paunch.  He found he suffered injustice and stupidity with the same sarcastic bitterness. However, his anger coursed hot when he and Johanna first came across the girl and the boy in the cave.

 

The girl had nearly caused another regeneration, leveling an arrow at his left heart in defense of their little shelter.  The boy was within, weak from the onset of blood poisoning.  The girl would not believe they were anything other than a threat and stood her ground, darting her arrow from the Doctor to Johanna while the boy talked to a combination of himself and the girl, trying to decide whether to trust the intruders. It was only the Doctor’s promise that he could cure the boy that gained them access to the cave.  The story the children--and they were only children, sixteen, both of them--told made the Doctor’s blood boil.  A gladiator competition comprised of children trapped in an arena filled with all manner of dangers and pitted against each other until one remained.  To add insult to injury, the whole horrible thing was broadcast throughout the nation, a grisly form of entertainment for a greedy, bloodthirsty capital.  The Doctor stared into the lens in the cave wall, listening to the whirs and clicks as it focused on his face.

 

He was more often than not a man of mercy.  But this was not one of those times.

 

The children, Katniss the girl and Peeta the boy, soon knew without a doubt that the Doctor and his companion were not a trap sent to kill them when an announcement was made over the arena.  Whichever tribute killed the mysterious pair and seized their blue box would be declared the victor of the Games.  When the anthem ceased, Johanna readied herself to disarm the girl, but Katniss stood with her bow at her side.

 

“It’s a trick,” she shrugged.  “It’s always a trick.  They’ll kill you then make us kill each other, down to one, or maybe two,” she said with uncertainty. “Same as it’s always been.”

 

“Not this time,” growled the Doctor.  

 

The strange blue box from the arena materialized in the middle of the capital’s city center, where citizens were rapt in the turn in the Games.  The Doctor was one syllable into his speech when Johanna rushed into the crowd and grabbed a small girl by the arm.

 

“What if it were your children?” she shouted, her hand on the child’s throat, tears of white hot anger streaming down her face.  “What if just this once it happened to you and not them?”  Before the Doctor could move, Katniss had ripped the girl from Johanna and planted herself firmly between them.

 

You could hear a pin drop.

 

Peeta stepped forward beside her.

 

“It’s not about revenge,” he said softly.  “It’s not about who hurts whom.  None of us are chattel.  None of us are pieces to be played.”

 

And that was it.  A handful of words and a gesture sparked a revolution.  Sometimes it was that easy.

War inevitably followed.  The Doctor stayed longer in one place than he had in centuries, but he would not let himself run away from this war.  He aided the rebellion as he had aided England’s queen on more than one occasion.  He helped guide the girl and the boy to victory.  And when their country was new again, their families safe, he found that he did not wish to leave them.

 

“There’s still too much to do,” Katniss argued.

 

“You deserve a bit of a holiday,” was the Doctor’s reply.  

 

“Katniss, it’s a time machine,” pleaded Peeta.  “We can literally come back right as we left!”  The boy held out his hand to her in the doorway to the TARDIS.  And she took it.

****************************************************

He could hear them now, laughing as they made their way to the control hub.  Finnick Odair was on their heels.

 

“I don’t understand why you’d ask her to teach you how to swim!”

 

“I didn’t really ask,” laughed Peeta.  “She pretty much demanded.”

 

“It’s stupid that he doesn’t know!” Katniss replied curtly.  “We almost lost him when we--” she stopped herself, trying to spare Finnick’s feelings.  The Doctor saved her from the shame.

 

“Johanna says he’s coming along like a lead balloon.”

 

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, Doctor,” Peeta grinned.  “I’ll have you know it was only my first lesson.”

 

“Next time, ask me.”  Finnick recovered, putting on his characteristic charm.

 

Finnick Odair had been prince of an underwater kingdom.  The Doctor closed his eyes and saw the great dome over the city collapse.  Saw Finnick try to wrest the doors of the TARDIS open as his home was devoured by the sea.  Heard him scream out the names of the dead.

Some worlds even the Doctor could not save.

*************************************************************

Finnick’s mask of normalcy was almost as good as the Doctor’s, although the time lord found that he had a fondness for whiskey following Finnick’s prolonged stay on the TARDIS.  At times the only person who could truly make him smile was Delilah Cartwright.

Delly had found the Doctor and his companions while working at the Fluff N Fold on a moon colony. She wasn’t a revolutionary or royalty, or particularly brave or fierce.  But she was good for a laugh and a pick-me-up, and, as far as companions went, she made everything just a bit lighter.

 

“Everyone’s gathered without me?!” Johanna and Katniss winced at Delly’s boisterous shout that made the Doctor grin.

 

“We’re teaching Peeta to swim,” said Finnick.

 

“I’M teaching him!” Johanna barked a laugh at Katniss’ insistence.

 

“You mean you found the swimming pool?!”  Delly exclaimed.  “You have to share!”

The control room was bursting with voices as each companion shouted and laughed over the other, the blue box full of life.  The Doctor felt as though he was hurtling a zoo through time and space, full of chaos and pain and joy and blossoming love.  It was all he could ever hope for and, though he was afraid of the time it would all come crashing to an end, for now he treasured the life that filled the halls. 


End file.
